In addition to World War II buffs, other readers will enjoy the intrigue, back-stabbing, action, and diplomacy in this...
Attorney Jordan (Brothers, Rivals, Victors: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley and the Partnership that Drove the Allied Conquest in Europe, 2011, etc.) delivers another page-turning chronicle of World War II.
Small details and little-mentioned facts make this a highly informative look at four men in charge in Washington, D.C., during that time. Franklin Roosevelt never made it easy for his military men. He was secretive and nonchalant, and his answers to their questions were often glib and equivocal. He was also very much under the spell of Winston Churchill. Planning meetings often began with the British presenting their strategy and the Americans, with no clue from FDR, nodding their heads. Luckily, the American contingent included Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall; Secretary of War Henry Stimson; and Ernest J. King, leader of the Navy. Marshall had his hands full fighting the Allies as much as the enemy. In the Pacific, there were squabbles between Army and Navy, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur focused primarily on his promise to relieve the Philippines. The British harped on their needs to strike at Africa and the Balkans, while the American public and Joseph Stalin were demanding action against Hitler in France. American tanks, planes, and ships supplied all of these theaters during the war, but they could only produce so much. Furthermore, a second front was impossible until 1944. Throughout, the author provides astute and clever portrayals of the leaders, including Churchill’s pretense to his ancestor’s abilities, Stalin’s displays of compassion, and FDR’s meddling in naval projects. Jordan’s wonderful new insight into the leaders shows how lucky we were regarding Stimson’s prescient warnings about nuclear war, Marshall’s long-suffering, self-effacing loyalty, and King’s rough-and-ready fighting abilities.
In addition to World War II buffs, other readers will enjoy the intrigue, back-stabbing, action, and diplomacy in this well-written book.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-41457-1
Page Count: 624
Publisher: NAL Caliber/Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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